Sarah Darer Littman: Learning all the wrong things at Yale

Published 7:12 pm, Thursday, February 2, 2012

Last November I wondered if I was the only person in Connecticut who didn't share the opinion that Yale quarterback Patrick Witt was a hero for his choice to play in the Harvard-Yale game rather than interview with the Rhodes scholarship committee.

In an interview with Bloomberg at the time, Witt portrayed his decision as principled: "In the description of the Rhodes, leadership is a major facet of who they select as candidates and finalists," he said. "In some ways, if I were to attend the interview and miss the game, I wouldn't be acting as the leader that they selected to interview." He also told ESPN that he would "pray over the decision."

Personally, I thought that heaping praise on the guy because he gave up the chance of a Rhodes scholarship for a football game (even if it was The Game) was symptomatic of everything that is wrong with this country's unhealthy obsession with college athletics, one that has a direct impact on all other aspects of life in institutions of higher learning. This has played out in a series of incidents in which universities ignored or covered up criminal activity in order to preserve the "integrity" (read income producing and fundraising potential) of their athletic programs.

But I was in the minority. Witt was lauded as the epitome of the scholar athlete, making a "Hamlet"-like choice.

Now, it turns out, there might not have been a choice at all. The timing of events is unclear, but at some point the Rhodes Trust learned of an informal sexual assault accusation filed against Witt by a fellow student and notified Yale that he would be ineligible for the scholarship unless university administrators re-endorsed his candidacy.

I'm reminded of a song by one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Jill Sobule, "Heroes." "Why are all our heroes so imperfect? Why do they always bring me down?"

No charges were ever filed against Witt in the sexual assault case. But while Witt was being lauded as the epitome of the heroic scholar athlete, praying for guidance to make the correct decision, and even more bizarrely to my mind, praised for choosing football over the chance to win one of the most prestigious academic scholarships in the world (and we wonder why the U.S. is sliding in the education stakes), Witt was cultivating the image himself, enabled by the university, and the Yale Daily News, which, according to a piece by former opinion editor Alex Klein on JimRomenesko.com, sat on the story for over two months.

Leadership, be it on the field, in the dean's office, or the editorial chair, isn't about preserving an image. It's about honor and integrity. The Yale motto is Lux et Veritas, light and truth. There's been little of that in the Witt case.

This apparent cover up is particularly disturbing given that Yale is currently subject of a Title IX civil rights investigation prompted in part by the appalling 2010 incident in which pledges of the DKE fraternity (of which Witt is a member) chanted sexist slogans like "No Means Yes, Yes means anal" and "F----ng sluts" as they paraded through Old Quad, home to many freshman women.

The university's response in that incident was illustrative of why 16 students chose to file the Title IX complaint charging Yale with failing to eliminate a "hostile sexual environment." That Dean Mary Miller chose to reference "free speech" in her letter to the Yale student body regarding the incident, showed an appalling lack of judgment when research funded by the U.S. Department of Justice estimates that one out of five college women will be sexually assaulted.